Modernism had created a very different world from what had gone
before it. According to Joseph Campbell, a noted scholar of myths, Modern society has resulted in
a "stagnation of inauthentic lives and living... that evokes nothing of our spiritual life, our
potentialities, or even our physical courage." He argued that the conditions of the modern world
had bogged people down in the everyday concerns of life and had made them observers rather than
participants in life's adventures, passive characters rather than active
heroes.
There is a definite sense in which Alfred Prufrock fits this
description of a profoundly modern man. The poem is all about the momentous visit he intends to
make and the question he intends to ask. However, crucially, he never arrives and never asks the
question. Instead, he reveals that he is a man torn by indecision and concerned about his own
appearance. He is an isolated man because of hsi fear of being ridiculed or misunderstood, and we
recognise that these aspects of his personality will always prevent him from realising his
dreams. The allusion to the sirens that ends the poem hints at a loss of hope that indicates
Prufrock's own understanding of his situation:
We have lingered in the chambers of the
sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and
brown
Till human voices wake us, and we
drown.
The "drown" in this quote could
refer to the loss of hope as Prufrock is distracted from his imaginings by human voices and
"woken" into the reality that he does so much to avoid.
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